Tag Archives: My thoughts are not your thoughts

Discipleship and witness, Knowing God

The Works of the Father (2)

2 Comments

Just before Jesus died, he declared: “It is finished!“ (John 19:30)  The great work of salvation through His sacrificial death on the cross was accomplished. The veil was torn, and the way to the Father was open.

But this triumphant moment was not the first time that Jesus said that His work was finished. Just after He starts praying to the Father, (John 17:4) He says: “I have finished the work you have given me to do…“ The word teleioō that is used here, translated as completed, or finished, is the same word that He used at the moment of His death. But whatever “work” that the Son of God was referring to as He prayed to the Father, it could not have been the work of redemption, because His blood had not yet been shed. So what was it?

He gives us the answer himself. The full text of John 17:4 – 6 is this:

“I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.”

The work that Jesus finished before He went to the cross was to reveal the Father to the ones that the Father had given Him, and by demonstration of the Father’s works to show that He was the one whom the Father had sent…

“If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.” (John 10: 37-38)

… so that, once sin had been atoned for and the Holy Spirit had been given, they could faithfully carry on the work of revealing the Father to others.

 “As the Father sent me, so I send you,” He said. (John 20:21) So now, 2000 years later, here we stand, being sent into all the world to make disciples, called to do the same work that Jesus did, in His name. No less than those first twelve were trained and equipped to carry on with His mission, our task is to reveal the Father to the ones He brings us. Jesus completed the work of revealing the Father because He knew Him intimately; He was, as He said more than once, one with Him. But this was His promise to us, and His prayer for us as well: “I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one.” (John 17:23)

In the Spirit we are one with the Father as we are one with Jesus. So how well to we know Him? Do we know what He is feeling? Can we see what He is seeing? Can we hear what He is saying? His thoughts aren’t our thoughts – so if we are going to follow Jesus by revealing Him, we need to spend time with Him and learn what His thoughts actually are. As we walk in the grace and forgiveness that Jesus purchased for us at that second, and greatest, moment of completion, let us remember the work that He spoke of at the time of the first one, and that He has passed on to us.

 By His Spirit the Father dwells within us, waiting to be manifested.

Pursuing Love

Pebbles on the Beach and The Mind of Christ

1 Comment

I’m not the only pebble on the beach. Sometimes I think I am: I see a situation or a person through my eyes, and consider what I see is the truth. I may be standing with someone or even a group of people who are looking at the same situation. What do they see? Do they have the same view and the same perspective as me? Do they bring the same history, the same thought processes and the same perceptions? No. So why and how can I possibly believe that what I think about a situation – or, even worse, a person – is the whole truth? Yet so often this is what I do. And we know what the book of Proverbs says about the man who is wise in his own eyes: “There is more hope for a fool than for him.” (Prov 26:12)

There is only one person who sees the whole truth, and that is the person who is the Truth. There are millions of pebbles on the beach – billions even. Each one of us is different, each one of us is unique, and each one of us sees through a different pair of eyes. Only God can see the real truth. One day we will “know as we are known,“ but until then what He wants us to do is to love one another, serve one another and submit to one another – and look to Him for the truth. If we succeed in this, and at least achieve some degree of unity in whatever little group we belong to – two or three gathered in his name – then we are in a position to look together to see the truth that the Truth reveals to us. If we are not in this place, we are forever in danger of arrogant opinions and warped imaginings that do not reveal the beauty of the Giver of Life.

I was recently discussing with someone how animals and birds “think.” We were considering the behaviour of different animals and birds and how complex their thought processes can be in their specialist areas, and also how alien they must be to our own. How much further beyond ours, then, are the thought processes of the One who says “my thoughts are not your thoughts?“

So how easy it is to think we know the truth, and how far our “truth“ can be from what is in the mind of Christ. Yet as Paul says, we actually have the mind of Christ. I think that we, His body, will be able to access more of  those thoughts that aren’t our thoughts that are flowing through our wonderful mind, when each of us remembers that we are not the only pebble on the beach.